Project: Hyper Drive Assembly Game for a Sci-Fi Adventure

This was a project done for 5Wits, an adventure-based company in the outskirts of Boston that aims to give their guests an experience that appeals to their 5 senses. The course was 2.744 Product Design in the Mechanical Engineering Departmet at MIT.

Client

5Wits, Boston, MA

Details

Design (Logo, UI, ...)

Project Work

Skills

Sketches

Prototyping

SolidWorks

Laser Cutting

Links

Final User Experience Storyboard

Concpet Sketches Highlights

Laser scanner recognition allows the crew to access the controls and take command of the ship. The laser scanner reproduces an image of the player's face onto a command screen for validation with earlier images taken of the crew when boarding the ship.

Command center's control buttons jump out of place when the mothership is hit. Team must work together to reorder the control buttons before they can activate hyperdrive and retaliate.

When hit by enemy fire, the mothership rattles and shakes, activating everyone's senses that they're under attack. The 'mothership' room sits in suspension relative to the 'outer room'.

Sketch Model Highlights

Designing an Insertion & Ejection Mechanism and Encasing

Insertion & Ejection Mechanism and Encasing

Some key features include:

A counterweight fixed to the Small Cylinder: While the cylinder is free to rotate, it is attached to a non-rotating counterweight inside the console, completely hidden from the user.

Square profile on a the counterweight: This allows for redundancy in ensuring the cylinder will not fall out of the console when ejected (in case there is electronic controls failure).

2 notches on the counterweight: Dimensions are driven by the half length of the Small Cylinder, and can be easily machined to accommodate any size stopper

2 stoppers going through the top wall of the encasing, activated by a servo or stepper motor connected with PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) signals on the controller

2 precision rails for the counterweight movement: This builds on existing technologies that are simplest to incorporate, test, and later modify according to different specifications (load resistances dependent on eventual changes to the final weight of the cylinder due to different materials chosen)

A dampening spring: This is attached from the back of the counterweight to the back, inner wall of the encasing in order to account for over-excited users that may want to slam the Small Cylinder back inside the console.